Mini Movies: Best Microscope Videos of 2012

Microscope photography gives us incredible views of everyday objects, exotic species and even ourselves that we would never be aware of on our own. But add movement to these images, and they come alive in amazing, beautiful and sometimes creepy ways.

Last year, Nikon added a video competition to its decades-old microscope photography contest. The best movies this year are even more incredible. The topics range from the sperm of two males competing to a beating heart to the growth of a brain. Here are all the winners.

Above:

1st Place: Sensing Danger

Olena Kamenyeva, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, Maryland

Subject: Recruitment of neutrophils to the site of laser damage in mouse inguinal lymph nodeTechnique: 2-Photon

This video shows the immune response in the lymph node of a mouse, when activated by a laser. Specifically, it shows an efficient innate immune reaction in the lymph node, which typically has been studied for the development of adaptive immune response.

Sperm of two different males (green and red) competing within the female reproductive tract of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Competition between sperm is a widespread phenomenon throughout the animal kingdom and a powerful evolutionary force driving species diversity. However, it has been nearly impossible to study the fundamental biological processes associated with such sperm competition, occurring whenever sperm from different males mix inside of females. The very recent development of genetically modified fruit flies that produce sperm with either green- or red-fluorescent heads (as seen in the movie) is now allowing us to answer important biological questions.

Illustrating the development of live kidney cells, specifically a metanephric kidney that has been cultured in vitro and imaged over 4 days. The fluorescence originates from a conditional YFP reporter, which is only activated in cells expressing Pax8. The fluorescent cells belong to the ureteric bud (the tree), the induced nephron progenitors cell (cells around the tree tips) and nephrons that are forming (the shapes forming within the tree). The YFP signal is viewed using a heat-map that has been overlaid onto the bright-field channel.

Honorable Mention: Flowing Liquid Crystal

This entry shows the fluid dynamics of liquid crystals. It is accompanied by changing colors resulting from shifts in the molecular orientation of the flowing liquid. Liquid crystals are now popular in TVs, laptops and other electronics.

Bay Scallop, Argopecten irradians used for Broodstock in the Luther H. Blount Shellfish Hatchery. You can see the scallop’s intense blue eyes lining the mantle edges on the top and bottom valves. They are used to see light and shadows of encroaching predators allowing the scallop to swim away as needed. You can also see the scallop filtering the water over its gills as the particles in the water (live algae) are actively directed into the animal. This animal was removed from its tank and placed in a container of seawater and allowed to open up. It was then put back into its tank alive after the video was taken, to be part of the spawning population.

The heart muscle cells of this transgenic fish expresses GCaMP, a genetically encoded fluorescent calcium indicator. Visible is the wave of cardiac conduction, traveling over the heart from atrium (bottom) to ventricle (top left). The heart has a size of about 250 um and beats at a rate of about two times per second. It was imaged in 3D inside the living zebrafish using Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) (Huisken et al. 2004).

Honorable Mention: The Rotifer Limnias melicerta

This microanimal lives in a self-built tube attached to waterplants. We see the rotifer using fast moving cilia to create a vortex. This enables it to sweep in food particles like algae. Inside the organism we can also see a jaw-like structures that grind the food.

Honorable Mention: CAR Fish Fibroblast

This video illustrates the polymerization of actin, a protein which drives cell movements. Actin acts like the “scaffold” of a cell, so understanding how it forms is important is to basic cellular research and can help answer further questions on how cells form.

This movie shows the growth, interaction, and movement of microtubule asters (in green) in Xenopus (frog) egg cytoplasm, following exit from metaphase (cell division). Asters grown in a thin layer of cytoplasm between two glass coverslips recapitulates the behavior of asters in early dividing live embryos during anaphase/telophase/cytokinesis. Where asters meet, cytokinesis proteins such as the chromosomal passenger complex (visualized using a fluorescently labeled antibody against a CPC component, shown in red) are recruited. This establishes a boundary between the two asters, and marks the position of the putative cleavage furrow.

Honorable Mention: Ciliates Feeding on a Bacterial Biofilm

Andrew Dopheide, University of Auckland, New Zealand Subject:Tetrahymena sp. (ciliate) feeding on a biofilm composed of the bacterium Serratia plymuthica, which is expressing a red fluorescent proteinMagnification: 400xTechnique: Confocal

This video shows Tetrahymena sp. (common freshwater protozoa) cells feeding on a biofilm composed of freshwater bacterium Serratia plymuthica. The bacterial cells and biofilm structures are visible due to expression by the bacteria of a red fluorescent protein. Tetrahymena sp. cells are visible as rapidly-moving clusters of intracellular feeding vacuoles packed with red-fluorescing bacterial cells. The focal plane of the video moves down with each successive frame, revealing the effect of Tetrahymena sp. feeding activity on bacterial biofilm morphology as ciliate-sized channels and holes throughout the biofilm.

A sheet of light is used to illuminate the plant (Arabidopsis thaliana), from the side while collecting the emitted light at a perpendicular axis. The plant grows in an upright position in the microscope’s specimen chamber. While the leaves remain in the air, the root system is perfused with liquid medium. and root stably expresses the early endosome/exosome marker 35S::GFP-RabA1d. The quick endosomes move with up to 10 µm/s, which presents a serious imaging challenge. This technique allows new insides in the dynamics of endosomal compartments in plant cells. The Arabidopsis line was kindly provided by Tobias Berson and Jozef Samaj.

Honorable Mention: The Making of the Brain

Fengzhu Xiong, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MassachusettsSubject: Imaging of the formation of the anterior hindbrain from a flat sheet of neural plate cells in a zebrafish embryoMagnification: 400xTechnique: Confocal Timelapse

The video demonstrates the formation of the anterior hindbrain from a flat sheet of neural plate cells in a zebrafish embryo. In particular, we view the patterns of the nervous system, which are important for understanding human disease. Membrane and nuclear fluorescent proteins were used to label the cells.